


you can't take the sky from me

by chasingforeverandaday



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Partners in Crime, little bit Firefly, little bit Killjoys, mostly an ode to gendrya in space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 18:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20214031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasingforeverandaday/pseuds/chasingforeverandaday
Summary: Arya and Gendry being their rebellious yet so very soft selves in space. That's it, that's the story.Arya x Gendry Week: Let's Run Away





	you can't take the sky from me

**Author's Note:**

> It's only about 15 minutes late, but here's my contribution to day 1 of Gendrya Week!  
The beautiful "We don't have to stay here..." quote from Killjoys while the title comes from Firefly's theme.  
Please comment below, I love hearing what people think.

It had been a day filled with more close calls than either Arya or Gendry cared to think about. They’d gone deep into Lannister territory in an attempt to find her sister, the only relative she has any word of, any chance at finding. It made her desperate for this to work, and desperation had made her sloppy.

“Down!” Arya ducked instinctively, body trusting Gendry’s commands before her mind could catch up. Rolling behind the closest tree, she glanced back at the pursuing guards, easy to pick out in their bright red uniforms. Her partner was twenty feet away, barely visible in his dark leather as he continued to snipe the men running after her. She checked the parcel zipped into her jacket, took two beats to steady herself, and then sprinted out from behind her cover. Gendry had her back, just as he always does, and she makes it onto  _ Nymeria _ with little more than a few scrapes and bruises.

While Gendry concentrated on getting their small spaceship in the air and off of Westerly, Arya heads straight for  _ Nymeria’s _ tech bay, pulling out a reader that will connect to the datachip she found amongst Sansa’s old things. Hidden in the spine of a Nortrun fairy tale collection, it was a place very few would think to look, except for perhaps a younger sister used to looking for diary accounts in her big sister’s room. Plugging it in, she waited anxiously as it uploads, gasping at the pale, bruised, and somehow smiling face of her sister when it fills the screen.

She’s crying in their bed when he finds her, curled in the blanket he bought from a Nortrun merchant while on Kingslan, the closest thing to a piece of her childhood home he’s ever been able to find. Red-rimmed eyes glance up at him as her face crumbles again and she opens her arms as he sits next to her. 

Pulling his partner down into his chest, he rubs her back as all her pent up feelings come rushing out in a jumbled explanation that Sansa had made it out with her husband’s manservant, was planning on starting a new life somewhere else, far from the reach of the lions’ claws. She didn’t say where, didn’t want to risk it falling into the wrong hands, but she was safe. And as astounding as Sansa’s safety may be, she’s still out of Arya’s reach with no clues as to her whereabouts. Their last chance at finding a piece of family beyond the walls of their ship, hopes dashed with a single video message. They were officially aimless, just drifting in space.

But this also meant that the Westerosi System no longer held any ties, on either of them; they were free in a way, free to try and make their own lives.

“We don’t have to stay here,” Gendry whispered into her hair once all her words were used up. Pulling back just enough to see his face, she regarded him carefully, not letting much emotion color her expression yet. She knew these words, the same ones he’d said to her the night they found each other again after years and lifetimes caught in between. The words have become something like vows, a benediction between herself and Gendry. A promise neither could ever break.

“We can just fly away and never look back.” His quiet words send her back, back to when she felt like a completely different person, back to the broken girl who had stumbled up the ramp of his ship, wearing a torn and blood covered dress, not sure exactly what she was looking for, but knowing she could find whatever it was with this not quite ghost from her half forgotten past. He’d been hunched over a piece of machinery in the cargo hold, reaching for the gun on the table next to him before he recognized who she was as she collapsed. In the haze of blood loss, all she can clearly remember after that is the look in Gendry’s clear blue eyes, one of panic and hope and relief, and what she has long since realized is pure love.

“You want to run, I call shotgun.” She’d woken up again after they cleared atmosphere, wrapped in one of Gendry’s shirts. The scent of grease and coffee filled the air, a comforting reminder of their younger days on the run. Carefully picking her way out of what she assumed was his room, based on the clutter, she followed her nose to the sight of her savior frying bacon in the small kitchen. Settling her tired body into the doorway, she watched him in silence, observing the newfound confidence and strength that filtered through his every movement. Gendry seemed so changed from the sullen, angry boy she once knew, but the kindness she’d seen in his eyes when he caught her as she fainted was just as warm as it had always been.

“You want to fight, I’ve got your back.” Without glancing over his shoulder, he’d told her to get her ass in gear before the food had gone cold. Going against every survival instinct the House had taught her, Arya sat next to him, let him into her blindspot as she devours the simple meal. Oh, she watched him out of the corner of her eye, of course, but it wasn’t to calculate the best ways to take him down. No, it was simply to look at him and see the ways their time apart has changed his still stupidly handsome face. He caught her gaze, and smiled, and suddenly everything felt right in her world.

“But we don’t have to stay. Run away with me?”

Drawn back to the present by his hand on her cheek, Arya settles further into his warm embrace, resting her forehead in his neck. “And if I don’t know where I want to go?” She feels small and vulnerable as she admits this, for he is the only person she can ever see herself telling these thoughts to. “What if all I want to do is stay here with you and pretend the rest of the universe doesn’t exist?”

“Then you have me.” Leaning down and giving her forehead a lingering kiss, Gendry then rested his chin atop her head, a position meant to comfort them both. “It’s like you told me years ago, you’re my family. I lost you once, and I’m never letting you go again.” 

Tucked in his arms, she thinks back on their first days on this quiet little ship. They’d fallen back together effortlessly. One day he was alone with his broken down and silent ship, the next he had his smirking Stark girl next to him and a sarcastic AI chip securely in place. His Needle class transport became  _ Nymeria _ , and it became their home. His bedroom became theirs, without ever discussing it, she simply never asks where else she should sleep and he never offers. Her knives and staves found a place next to his tools and blasters, her array of silks and disguises hung next to his dirty gray and black work clothes.

Their lives were somehow even more complicated now than they had been when they met in the back of a prisoner transport years ago as two orphans with nothing much to live for. She was now a rogue princess who’d spent time with a cult of face changing assassins, while he was technically the heir to the throne on Kingslan that the noble families of the quadrant had been fighting over for generations. 

Between the marauding Greyjoy Krakens and the swarms of Lannister flagships patrolling the black space, few ports that would accept their humble  _ Nym _ . Well, few that would accept her without need of generous bribery, a luxury they could ill afford. Working as a bounty hunter could be lucrative, yes, but most clients wanted to see the face of the ones taking their money, something that exponentially limited the offers Gendry felt they could take. And while technically Arya could just as easily go faceless on their jobs, she didn’t want to lose herself again, not after it took so long to find Arya Stark. It remained a last resort, one she had promised Gendry she would never use, and one she had promised herself she would only use if it meant she could save him.

Eyes closed, she tried to picture her future. In some visions, she could see her siblings again, laughing around the fireplace at Winterfell. In others, she was staring out into the black, a realm of stars she’d never seen before just beyond the cockpit of the  _ Nym _ . Sometimes, she gazes down at a tiny black haired babe in her arms, nestled next to her heart. 

In every future, every possibility laid out in front of her mind’s eye, she sees Gendry at her side. He will never leave her, she knows this now, knows that there isn’t a word in the universe that could define what they mean to each other. She thinks of all the times one of them have said these sacred words to one another, and the not quite answers they’ve both given.

_ Run away with me? I can’t, not yet. _

_ Run away with me? This isn’t a problem we can’t run away from Arya. _

_ Run away with me? Where do we have to run to? Everything we know is gone! _

But tonight, she knows he doesn’t actually expect an answer, just wants her to know that he’s still here, still fighting for her and the lives they could one day have. And maybe it’s giving up, maybe it’s admitting defeat, but she wants someday to be now. She doesn’t want to waste another minute of him not knowing exactly how important he is to her. So she tells him, “Ask me again.” 

Startled, Gendry shifted to look into her eyes, searching for a reason, an answer to all the questions running through his mind. He must have seen whatever it was he needed, because a grin broke out over his face as he bent down. “Run away with me?”

Small smile on her lips, she leaned in to kiss him softly, before pulling back just enough to whisper, “I call shotgun.”

**Author's Note:**

> Am I an enormous scifi nerd? Yes, yes I am.  
Did I let it take over this fic? Possibly.  
Should everyone go watch Killjoys? Yes, and they should do so immediately.


End file.
